-------------- Original message ---------------------- From: "Dr. Core" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> The conclusion that the professor gave us was not that as technology > develops (we were all engineering students), the civilian casualty > (now called collateral damage) to military accomplishment ratio > doesn't improve. From spears to muskets to machine guns to bombs to > cruise missiles (ok actually when we took the course the cruise > missiles haven't been used in real war yet), it hasn't really changed > fundamentally. Does Iraq and Vietnam have more military targets than > all of Europe and Japan during WW2? I doubt it, but after 60 years of > technology advance it still take more tonnage of bombs to accomplish > less. It seems pretty clear that it will end up costing more deaths > per capita in Iraq and Afghanistan than it did to defeat Germany or > Japan. The smarter the bombs the more people die. Why? I have some > explanation, but that's important, whatever explanation is not > important just the observation that smarter bombs aren't reducing > civilian casualties nor increasing military accomplishment. Maybe it's just me, but it's hard to count Iraq and Vietnam and use those numbers for theories like this because in those two cases, the numbers are stacked against the US in the sense that half the time, the soldiers/terrorists or whatever they call themselves hide among civilian, and more often or not, to everybody but themselves, they are civilians. Regular soldiers are not trained to distinguish between the two, as unless you live there, so I doubt anyone can tell the difference. Just base on that, I would imagine the number would skew against the US/Allied. Remember, they want civilian deaths, so Iraq/Vietnam would be more than happy to make sure civilians are getting killed. Again, it's like playing Blackjack with a deck that has 40 10 or above cards - the chance of you busting with 12 and getting a card is very high - not saying you will bust all the time, but more often or not, you will bust... > > Just a long winded way to say Graham and CB's indignation over > supposed civie deaths is laughably naive. Also Prof. Eifman is > definitely a legit target. Remember the "Most-wanted Iraqi" playing > cards? 3 out of 52 cards were for scientists or science advisors (4 & > 5 of Hearts and 7 of Diamonds). Sucks that Union can't provide decent > protection to their top brain. I think they are more concern about the change in "behavior" from the CB they used to know - CB never go out of their way to kill people. From their prospective, it's a pretty scary thought, since they never really been able to stop Gundams, so if they really want to wipe them off earth, unless they band together, there is nothing they can do. On the attack against the Pro. Eifman, three Gundam wents, and judging from the last exercise that actually yield decent result, you better hope you have over 200 MS to guard the place, and based on the number games they seems to be playing, I doubt they can afford to put that many on base. > > > There is a question, of course, regarding where exactly you draw the line. > But the > > The rhetorics is redefined to fit the situation, the line was never > there to start with, not since the dawn of civilization. I thought history was pretty clear on that - the line is drawn by the victor - whoever "wins" can decide whether they cross the line. I thought that emperor in China did it pretty good - he pretty much kill anyone (ok, more like burn/buried) and burn any books that write/talk against him :) -------------------------------------------------- The Gundam Mailing List MK-II [email protected] Archives: http://www.gundam.com/gml Help: Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this in the BODY: help list
